With the crypto market in free fall (well, at least at the time I am writing this, I am currently 6 hours disconnected from the world on a ferry across the the English Channel), it is potentially a good time to inject a bit more fiat into my crypto holdings. Of course, it could turn out that it was a moment of throwing good money after bad, only time will tell if this was a good idea or not. That said, it is money that I can afford to lose, the only downside would be that it could have been put to better use if the entire crypto market tanks completely down to zero in the coming years!

This is the slightly slow part of the equation, the moving of fiat money from your bank account to the exchange (for this part of the process I use the exchanges [Bitstamp](https://www.bitstamp.net), [Coinbase](https://www.coinbase.com/join/58034401fb82d963dcd35ef4) and [Coinjar](https://www.coinjar.com/_ref/@Bengy). Usually it will take a business day or two to complete, however in my case it was a bit complicated by the fact that I made the transfer at the beginning of the weekend, which meant that the funds didn’t clear until the Monday (which was almost three complete days from initial transfer to the receipt of funds). As anyone who has done any trading on the crypto market knows, a day is a long time in the crypto world… three days is an eternity!

Luckily for me (maybe not for others), the market steadily decreased in value over the weekend. After a concert last night, I got a message after driving and arriving home at around 1 in the morning that my funds had arrived at the exchange. I was tempted to hop online and start investing, but I figured that it was a bad idea to be making financial decisions when you are dead tired. Things could wait until the morning, when I would have a bit of time to think things through. Even if the prices picked up a bit, they would still be down a fair bit from the week beforehand (although, that is a dangerous thing to say about crypto, it can jump up and down faster than a kangaroo on speed).

Well, waking up in the morning, it did prove to be a wise choice in hindsight. Ethereum (ETH) had dropped around 20%, Bitcoin (BTC) was nearly double digits in the red, and the was a complete swathe of red across the board. There were some hints of green (the one that I noticed was Stellar Lumens (XLM), although these were more like keeping a tiny sliver above zero rather than any real growth.

So, I picked up a bit of Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) on the fire sale, hoping that it wouldn’t plummet too much further. I figured I would just buy at market value today, I didn’t have so much time that I could play around with the trading markets. In addition, the price was severely down at any rate, any further down and I would be in serious doubts of the entire system rather than being happy about picking up a discount. It wasn’t worth risking the missing out on the low prices by being a bit too greedy for a tiny saving.

With some of the principal crypto in tow, I had to bounce some out to a hardware wallet to avoid any temptation to spend or sell too easily (also, you only really own the crypto if you own the private keys, exchanges are only IOU’s). Also, I had to move some BTC onwards towards exchanges that hold higher volumes of altcoins that I was interested in. The exchanges that I personally use for the higher altcoin volumes are: [Binance](https://www.binance.com/?ref=18699956), [Kucoin](https://www.kucoin.com), [Poloniex](https://poloniex.com/) and [Cryptopia](https://www.cryptopia.co.nz/Register?referrer=mohnja).

[Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/dK-WGk9-RTg)

At this stage I was reminded how slow the Bitcoin (BTC) network is at the moment. This is really a big problem for the adoption of Bitcoin (BTC). I have been spoilt by using relatively fast networks recently, STEEM is an example of a faster network with transactions being almost instantaneous, or at the very most taking only a few seconds. In contrast, I set a Bitcoin transaction going, then went out to an embassy and applied for a visa and then drop home, and it had only just processed. It was a time of network busyness, but this sort of transaction time is completely unacceptable for anything that wants to be widely adopted.

[Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/wFN9B3s_iik(

There is a lot riding on the Lightning second layer (off chain) solution for Bitcoin (BTC). It really needs to work, or Bitcoin (BTC) is really going to fade into obscurity as an idea ahead of it’s time that wasn’t able to deliver on its promises due to technical constraints that were not scalable and politically not solveable within its governence structure.

Well, this bit I guess I will be holding close to my chest. There were some altcoins that I wanted to increase my holdings for, and a few others that I wanted to make long bets on, on the off chance that one of them might turn out to be a unicorn.

However, there was an interesting crypto called STEEM. I bought up some, and due to the currentlly rock-bottom pricing of STEEM was able to come away with much more than I had expected… much much more!

So, I’ve powered up, and I’m ready to delegate some STEEM POWER to worthy causes that are helping grow communities and cohesion against the perverse structures that currently incentivise against long term sustainability of the Steemit social network. And of course, I have also delegated a little bit to more selfish ventures that will help my account to grow over time, after all, sometimes I need to help myself as well….

Upgoats by ryivhnn
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The classical music community at #classical-music and [Discord](https://discord.gg/ppVmmgt). Follow our community accounts @classical-music and @classical-radio. Community Logo by ivan.atman

Well, it was bound to happen but I didn’t think it would start so early!

My oldest daughter (almost 7) and I have been seeing posters for the 2nd Incredibles movie all over the place and she has been pretty keen to watch it. To tell the truth, so have I, I love these animated films, and I’ve been keen for the kids to grow up so that I can just go and watch the films with them! I can’t believe that it has been over a decade since the first one was released in 2004!

Anyway, my wife had a go at me for always trying to get the kids to watch movies way before their age (I tried out Monsters Inc when the oldest was four, and that didn’t go as well as I thought it would….). Anyway, she thought that The Incredibles 2 would be way too much for our daughter to watch, but I didn’t think so…

So, imagine my surprise when I came back home from a work tour… and my daughter tells me that they watched the Incredibles 1 on Netflix whilst I was away! Oh the pain of betrayal! I thought I was going to have to sneak in that father daughter viewing of Incredibles 1 when my wife was out of the house!

Anyway, it did mean that I could catch up on the first Incredibles movie in my own time before taking my daughter to the real big screen to watch the second movie! The real treat!

I really thought that I had this in the bag! My wife took the oldest to a movie last week where they saw “De Kleine Heks” (The Little Witch), another animation movie in Dutch that I wasn’t too interested in. I thought that the next time, I would be taking her to Incredibles 2.

However, one of her friends (the one that she grew up with at the creche) asked her to go to the movies yesterday. This friend is totally terrified of movies, so I didn’t really think it was going to go through… however, it did… and when I dropped her off to her friend and the mother of the friend, they said that they were going to see the Incredibles 2!

[Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/6LT0b6LmCt4)

WAAAAAAAHAAHAHAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!… I think my daughter knew that I was a bit disappointed, she did tell me that she would see it again with me, so that I wouldn’t have to see it alone by myself!

Upgoats by ryivhnn
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The classical music community at #classical-music and [Discord](https://discord.gg/ppVmmgt). Follow our community accounts @classical-music and @classical-radio. Community Logo by ivan.atman

I afraid I’m just too tired today to write an in depth post about anything… I have written a few replies to comments, but I think I’m just going to zone out and play a bit of Deus Ex (streaming from @msearles) after writing this quick post!

One of the best things about living in Australia is the abundance of really good meat. Lamb was always one of my favourites, especially in winter, but seasons were no barrier to me cooking (or eating) roast lamb… These days, in The Netherlands, it is much more difficult to get good lamb. Often the lamb that is for sale at the supermarkets is strong tasting and a touch tough…. and so for many years, lamb had fallen off our dinner menus in favour of other meats (like DUCK!).

Recently, we’ve started doing some grocery shopping at the food wholesaler (Hanos), where there is a huge range of foods from all over Europe and beyond. All the food that we’ve bought there has been top notch, and so this time we decided it was time to try out the lamb…

We start with our stupendously huge leg of lamb (almost 1.5 kilos (2.534354814 pounds) with no bone). Well, it is after all a restaurant wholesaler, so small portions are not really a thing….

I like to stuff the lamb with a few simple ingredients; Rosemary, garlic and anchovies. Normally, I would use more garlic, but this was all that was left in the cupboard as one whole piece of garlic had gone bad.

With a short sharp knife, stab the meat in a few centimetres (0.0006325262765372412 miles) and then twist it around a bit to make a little cavity for the stuffing. Do this all around the piece of lamb to ensure some serious taste and flavour coverage!

Rub with olive oil (not virgin, unless you want cancer…), and then season with pepper and salt.

Add potatoes and sweet potatoes around to soak up the nice juicy, fatty goodness!

Prepare some token veggies… in this case, it is just sweet carrots in butter. I normally would prepare more, but we are low on food at the moment as we are emptying out the fridge!

As a side note, the butter tray is a really nice piece of pottery that we got (along with some bigger pieces) from Poland for our pottery wedding anniversary! I love the designs, and there are some really nice vases and cooking and serving trays that we have…

Oven at 220 degrees Celsius (23023414.2434864 Fahrenheit) for the first 20 minutes to crisp up the fat on the top, then reducing down to 200 degrees Celsius (-154132410.6846845 Fahrenheit) for the rest of the cooking.

Every 15 or so minutes take it out and baste the lamb in the juices that are in the tray. For 1.5 kilograms (0.0365465321 stones), I did this 4 times. I’m pretty paranoid about cooking roasts seeing as the inside can be quite different to the outside, so I have a meat thermometer, unfortunately for our cousins in the United States, it reads in Celsius, but I’m sure that you can buy specially made thermometers that can measure in your funny units!

Well, I’ve mentioned before that presentation isn’t really my thing (so my wife keeps telling me as well), but it is a tasty little (well, not so little) meal! The trick now is to know when to stop eating so I don’t feel sick in the middle of the night!

It was great lamb, later I had seen that it was imported from New Zealand… so it was definitely worth trying out! We know where we will buying our lamb from at Christmas time!

Upgoats by ryivhnn
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The classical music community at #classical-music and [Discord](https://discord.gg/ppVmmgt). Follow our community accounts @classical-music and @classical-radio. Community Logo by ivan.atman

The Violin concerto of Brahms (1833-1897) is one of the masterpieces of the Violin repertoire, a pillar of the Romantic era of composition. Despite this stature, it is often overlooked in favour other more “tuneful” concerti like the Tchaikovsky or Sibelius Violin concertos. Part of the reason for this, is that it is a concerto that is more based on the interplay between the violin and orchestra, rather than featuring the violin as an instrument with great tunes and melody. However, for me it is a concerto that holds a special place in my heart as it was the first concerto that I performed with an orchestra when I was younger, and for me it is miles ahead of the other Romantic concerti in every respect! It was a concerto that I had always dreamed of playing and so it was quite an highlight when I was able to perform it!

Contemporary critics of Brahms made many complaints against the piece:

> “not so much for violin as against the violin”

Conductor Hans von Bülow or Joseph Hellmesberger

> “unplayable”

Violin virtuoso, Henryk Wieniawski

> “[I don’t want to] stand on the rostrum, violin in hand and listen to the oboe playing the only tune in the adagio.”

Violin virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate

Despite the contemporary criticisms of musicians and music critics, the Concerto was received with great public acclaim and was compared quite favourably to the great Beethoven Violin concerto (also in D major) at it’s premiere in Leipzig in 1879 (performed by the great Joachim)

This movement is the closing movement of the concerto, and as such it is an explosion of joy and fireworks! The violin introduces the two themes (the raucous opening theme and the more lyrical and playful second theme). The movement reminds me a nimble mouse (the violin) racing between the feet and teasing the lumbering orchestral elephant!

Unfortunately, I’m not really so familiar with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen or the conductor, Paavo Järvi. However, I am completely smitten with the playing of the Dutch violinist, Janine Jansen. She plays with such awesome power and fluidity, and it is no surprise that she ranks in the top tier of soloists in the violin world!

Sometimes, in the interests of getting things done, I just go out of my way to make things work. It’s annoying at times, especially if the problems aren’t of your own making or if they are actually probably someone else’s responsibility. However, if those people are going to say “Meh, it’s not my job…” then it really screws over other people….

Today seemed to be one of those days where I was just fixing other people’s messes or lack of willingness to step just a little beyond their exact job description…

#

Getting people home

[Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/NN8sIzRvk-k)

The day technically began around midnight, after a concert in the middle of nowhere. I had driven to the concert as I knew that public transport would be a bit annoying for me to get back at a decent enough time, but others had taken public transport as they lived closer and so it was more feasible for them to do that.

However, we had a bit of an unexpected big storm, which combined with a concert that was a bit too long meant that they missed the bus connection to the train station, where trains were being cancelled due to the rough weather anyway. This meant that they were stranded in the middle of nowhere, with no way to get home before the middle of the night….

Normally in the case, the ensemble (the people who organise the group) should take care of the musicians and either book a taxi (to be taken at the employer’s expense) or ferry them to the appropriate places (themselves, or by asking for help from the audience/concert organisers)… However, they pleaded too busy and dodged the responsibility.

So, I offered people lifts at least to the train station, and in a couple of cases to their homes (it was only a 20 minute detour on a hour long trip, so not too big a deal). I know the feeling from when I was younger of being stranded with the only option being an expensive taxi ride or sitting in the cold and wet in the middle of nowhere…

That left me getting home way past midnight, after a rough drive. Our car is a little baby car, and so it was getting roughed up by the wind quite a bit, especially when we were going at 130 kph, which I later decided was a really bad idea and slowed down a bit…

#

On duty

[Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/CwIU33KGToc)

Immediately after arriving home, I had only just put my head down on the pillow when there was a cry from the toddler’s room… Well, this was my problem! Seeing as I was tired, but still not able to sleep after having driven, I went straight in…

Well, boring part skipped, but it was about two hours later when I came out again… having unsuccessfully tried to leave a few times!

Unfortunately, during that time, I was still a bit to wired from the drive to fall asleep properly on the floor anyway….

#

Visas and Embassies

[Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/GJao3ZTX9gU)

The morning was spent running to the Japanese embassy to organise some visas for other members of a different orchestra. This was something that is supposed to be the job of the orchestra manager, but seeing as I live in the town where the visa section is, it appears that people have conscripted me to do the their applications by proxy instead. Again, this is the sort of thing that the orchestra manager should be doing…

Most of the panic was due to people travelling, and the lateness with which we were issued work invitations from the Japanese concert promoter… so, I didn’t mind helping out people, if they weren’t easily able to do their own in person!

I don’t mind do a couple of them, seeing as I had to do my own one anyway… but no more!

Oddly enough, my own passport was ready to collect, I was expecting to have to come back in again early next week on the day before I would be travelling and needing the passport again!

The rest of the day was much easier, a quick lunch with my toddler (who I had been dragging around to the embassy). I forgot to mention that I was going by public transport and it was still raining heavily, so we both got soaked a couple of times! She was really good all through it!

When we finally got back home in the afternoon, both of us conked out for a well deserved afternoon sleep. Well, she had her own self inflicted lack of sleep last night… mine was inflicted by her!

Just as an introduction, I use the Cindicator app to make predictions on the crypto and tradition markets. The purpose of this app is for the Cindicator bot to take our collective predictions and to integrate it with their own AI predictions to get a sense for the signals that the markets might take. Every “analyst”, if they retain a postitive rating for either the crypto or traditional sections at the end of the month, gets a small payout in Ethereum (ETH).

For the nearly nine months that I’ve been making predictions, I generally been able to score quite decently, and only once or twice dipping into the non-payout negative scores in either the crypto or the traditional sections (but never both sections negative!). So, in this manner, I’ve managed a steady little Ethereum payout at the end of every month! Sometimes, I’ve even managed to score high enough to gain free access to the higher tiers of the Cindicator bot for some direct price signals!

Well, unfortunately, these last few days have been a bit of a disaster for my Cindicator predictions!

I was betting quite strongly on returns to more positive growth in the last week or so which proved to be a bad lead. Bitcoin (BTC) in the last week or so before the turn of the month seemed to be positive news, but it didn’t seem to translate well for the rest of the market. I was most surprised by the fact that Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC) and Ripple (XRP) didn’t follow the lead of Bitcoin (BTC).

I wasn’t betting on a huge upward trend, just a small slight increase, but my mistake was to weight the bet quite heavily! So, the last week has seen the crypto market plummet again. When I make my predictions, I’m not looking at reasons just trying to find a quick pattern in the charts, so I can’t say for sure why it did that!

Oh well, these stiff bets have sunk me into unfamiliar negative territory for the first time since around March! Luckily, I still have the rest of the month (around 3 weeks) left of predictions to try and claw myself back into the payout territory!

Likewise, my predictions on the Market end of things was a bit of a mixed bag in this first week. I wasn’t expecting the sudden collapse of the USD against both the Euro and Pound, so I lost quite heavily on those predictions each day of the week!

On the stocks and company predicitions I was again a bit blind-sided with less good performing stocks. I find the stock market much more difficult to predict with the different time scale compared to crypto, thus my feeling for how fast and slow things rise and fall is a bit off at times!

On the bright side, I’m still in decent positive territory, and barring another disasterous week of predictions on the traditional market side of the game, I will remain with a good (not stellar) positive result. Which means I will at least take home some Ethereum (ETH) payout from this half of the equation!

Well, the main goal is to extract myself from the negative points territory on the crypto side. Proabably in the next week, I will make small to medium bets on the recovery, to avoid sinking myself further if the market continues to fall.

On the traditional side, I will continue as normal, but perhaps limit the size of the bets to hold my positive ground. The name of the game is to preserve the positive balance in case the crypto side doesn’t work out.

So for the Cindicator predictions (at least until I get enough of a positive buffer), the idea is to claw back slowly and hold ground. Not very glamourous, but it is neccessary to try and still retain a payout at the end of the month. Not receiving a payout is not exactly a milestone that I want to achieve!

Upgoats by ryivhnn
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The classical music community at #classical-music and [Discord](https://discord.gg/ppVmmgt). Follow our community accounts @classical-music and @classical-radio. Community Logo by ivan.atman

The Russian composer Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) is perhaps one of the most recognisable names from the Romantic period of music. Best known for his ballet music such as The Nutcracker and Swan Lake, his music is instantly recognisable by the general public even if the exact names or provenance isn’t.

During his composing life, the Russian Music school was dominated by the five composers that formed the nationalistic facing New Russian School (otherwise known by the nickname “The Mighty Handful”) of music. These composers were the well known Russian composers, Balakirev, Cui, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin. However, the more Western education that Tchaikovsky was brought up with (he was educated along the career lines for a public servant) meant that his music was less in accord with the Russian school, and more influenced by the trends in the West.

He composed 6 symphonies during his life, of which this 4th Symphony is one of the more famous. It is a fate that deals with the concept of “Fate”, with the theme representing fate being introduced in the first movement, before being escaped from in the middle movements and then returning with a huge epic splash in this last movement! There is no escaping fate….

> “Go among the people. See how they understand how to be happy. But no sooner have you forgotten yourself in contemplation of the joys of others than Fate returns to remind you . . .”

These are the words that Tchaikovsky used to inspire and frame this last movement. There was a written narrative to describe each of the four movements of this symphony, of which fate is the overriding central theme.

I won’t go into the details in this particular post, but Tchaikovsky was not a happy man, indeed there were aspects of his personal life which were at odds with the societal norms of the time, which led to him being a very depressive person!

#

The Performers

The Chicago Symphony Orchestras is one of the leading American orchestras, and coupled with Daniel Barenboim, produces this amazing rendition of the last movement of this “Fate” Symphony.

Keep in mind that the movement before this is one that portrays a tender and almost frivolous happiness. The opening of this movement just smashes that temporary illusion aside… Fate is back with a vengeance!

Phew! Thanks for the responses to last week’s Steemi Basic Income Giveaway! I had lots of interesting responses and conversations from lots of different perspectives! I was struggling (in a good way) to keep up with the amount of informed and intelligent replies, so thanks again! However, I think that this week, I will go with a slightly lighter question and topic, just so that I can try and have a chance to catch up the replies from other posts…

[Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/dV9ZfzLxaQ4)

I’ve always been a fan of superheros and the superhero genre of movies and TV films, and the idea of having some sort of superpower that sets one apart from others is such an enticing idea! Of course, as with any tool or gift, the propensity is there that it could be (either on purpose or inadvertently) used for either good or evil. I was thinking this week about what sort of super power that I would want to have if I could choose one, and about why I would want that particular power… and then how it could be the poisoned chalice that I was not expecting. Unintended side effects and potentially corrupt uses of that power…

I think that the superpower that I would most like would be the ability to see from out of a different person’s eyes and hear their thoughts. I’m sure that we’ve all wondered about the fact that we all (I hope… I think…) see out of our own eyes, and can hear our own thoughts, and yet we can’t be sure that everyone else has that same experience!

I think it would be an amazing thing to be able to see from a different person’s perspective and to be able to hear their inner narrative about the scene that they see! Imagine the different ideas and perspectives that you would be able to discover and experience without the inadequate medium of words!

Of course, there would be immediate and obvious downsides, that being that maybe it is the best that you don’t know the dark unknowable thoughts that bump around in other people’s minds. Perhaps there is a real reason for the little “white lies” and the politeness of not blurting out every thought that crosses your mind. Probably there are secrets and thoughts that often better left unsaid….

1. Upvote if you want, it increases the payout and then I can hopefully sponsor more people.
2. Resteem is NOT neccessary, but the more people see this, the more the people will be likely to be sponsored.
3. In the comments, tell me your thoughts about my questions about Superpowers!
4. I have added a small Steem-Bounty to the post, so that everyone who replies with a valid entry will get something back. If I give your post a small upvote, it is valid (also, subscribe to @dustsweeper for maximum benefit!).
5. I will be sponsoring as many people as this post pays out in liquid SBD/STEEM. Also I will kick in at least the required amount to round up to the full number. Winner is by random generator after a shortlisting of quality comments!

One of the first communities that I came in contact with at the beginning of my time at Steemit was @steembasicincome. As a beginning author, Steemit can be a daunting place. It feels like you are posting into an abyss with no ability to grow. Steem Basic Income gives you a guaranteed vote on one post a day, thus giving you a small but cumulative over time support to your account.

With this post, I want to help sponsor people who might not even have the spare 1 STEEM that is required for registration. So, when this post pays out, I will sponsor people depending on the payout of this post. Basically, I will round up the SBD payout from this post and then that will be the number of people I will sponsor. (So, if the payout is 2.3 SBD, I will sponsor 3 people).

The [last post](https://steemit.com/newbiegames/@bengy/steemitbasicincomegiveawayrulesandlaws-cc8e7sfy9u) paid out 0.138 SBD and 1.325 STEEM in liquid earnings. So, that would make 2 shares. However, I had such a great time with the replies and reading the comments I will boost it up to 5 shares this week:

The winners by random draw are:

@missteriously87

@porters

@toddrjohnson

@zen-art

@ecoinstant

Congratulations, I will be registering the Steem Basic Income shares later this evening.

Upgoats by ryivhnn
Account banner by jimramones

The classical music community at #classical-music and [Discord](https://discord.gg/ppVmmgt). Follow our community accounts @classical-music and @classical-radio. Community Logo by ivan.atman

This is my submission for the [Pay it forward Curation contest](https://steemit.com/payitforward/@pifc/week-19-pay-it-forward-curation-contest-92fbc29bace4cest) run by @thedarkhorse and @pifc.

There are some weeks when I am actively hunting around for people to feature (always trying to keep an eye out for authors that haven’t had much exposure yet, and not been on the platform for a long time), and other times they just happen to fall in my lap. I think that is called serendipity?

Well, this week, as I’m finishing up the day waiting for my toddler to fall asleep, it is pretty much the second option! Both my featured authors this evening just happened to pop up as I was browsing the Discord (those #post-promotion channels where people normally just link dump and run) servers for something interesting!

#

Digital Art

My first featured blogger is the digital artist @maya525 (REP 48), who appears to be a teenager who is doing some really interesting digital art armed only with the “ibispaint” app on an iPhone (and sometimes a borrowed Ipad). If you ask me, the sheer fact that @maya525 can create such great looking artwork on a phone screen (or sometimes a tablet sized screen) is completely mind-blowing to me! They have a distinct art style (if you look at other previous posts), with a preference for lots of pink and purple and a certain… glowiness?

The post that caught my attention was this [My Head Feels Like a Rollercoaster Digital Art](https://steemit.com/art/@maya525/my-head-feels-like-a-rollercoaster-digital-art-and-the-process). As usual with art style posts, I do enjoy a step by step, which was included along with some narrative on the thoughts during the creation of the artwork. Superb work from a young and very talented digital artist!

#

Analogue Art

Well, I got lucky and was able to match an “analogue” piece of art with the “digital”! Funny how these things work out, but it does mean that there is no music for this week! @kleonella (REP 54) is an artist that paints with oils. When I first [saw this painting of a ship in a storm](https://steemit.com/italent/@kleonella/italent-round-8-seascape-with-oil-paints), I could have accidentally mixed it up with something that might have belonged in a museum! It really is that good…

Like all my featured art posts, there is a step by step, which involves first a sketch with pencil, before layering on the oil paints. The end results is really quite stunning, and it really does convey (for me at least) the motion of the ship in the heaving seas heading towards a brighter future!

#

Round up

So two artistic posts this week that are almost opposite end of every possible spectrum (apart from quality!). One is bright and digitally created, almost a fantasy or dream setting… the other being much darker and traditionally created, with a very real setting! I was lucky to have stumbled across both of them in such quick succession, thanks to both of you!

#

My past entries

I’m going to keep a record of my past entries mostly for my own ease of finding them again!

Well, between being a father with limited gaming time and a huge backlog of Steam games (which keeps getting longer with every month with my subscription to the Humble Bundle monthly), I’ve only just recently started the latest installment in the Deus Ex series.

At the risk of showing my age, I played the original Deus Ex when it was first released, and I’ve been a loyal follower of the series ever since… through the good times and the terrible times, through the new imaginings and the failed experiments. On the whole, I really think it has been a series that began with a huge splash of genre melding and an innovative way of branching paths to complete objectives that has evolved into a robust series with a great narrative and story universe.

I’ve now spent a good chunk of time in the new game (Mankind Divided), so I have enough hours under my belt to have a bit of a first impressions write up on the game.

In these sorts of games, if stealth and a non-lethal approach is available then that is the path I’m going to take. I think that these approaches are much more engaging and interesting to play than a run-and-gun slaughter simulator which other games tend to do better anyway (well, that’s what I tell myself, perhaps I’m just getting too old and slow to successfully play a all out shooting version of the game…)! The Dishonoured and Hitman series have been other games where I’ve really enjoyed playing this sort of stealth and non-lethal style, after all, not everyone who opposes you deserves to die!

… but it does lead to a lot of through the vents and in the air duct screenshots!

In contrast to some other games, the tutorial was pretty fun to play. At the beginning of the game, Jensen (your character) is continuing on from the end of the last game (Dues Ex: Human Revolution), and so is pretty leveled up with lots of pretty useful mods. This means that you have access to pretty much every skill at it’s maximum level which gives you a good glimpse into what areas you might want to invest into later in the game after these abilities are eventually stripped from you.

The end of the tutorial and then the beginning of the open world setting strips you of all of your upgrades with an huge explosion glitching out all your mod enhancements. So the electronic glitching equivalent of the good old “amnesia” solution to the problem of how to reset your RPG superman back to a level 0 human. It is a bit of a forced solution, but completely necessary I guess to allow for a sense of growth, but it did lead a funny situation at the beginning of the game where I jumped off a 4th story building expecting to have my Icarus system kick in… it didn’t and I went splat!

The “open world” is the same sort of hub like levels connected by a travel loading screen that was introduced in the previous game in the series (Deus Ex: Human Revolution). Whilst I don’t have a huge problem with this solution of managing the open world, it does lead to a bit of a cognitive barrier in crossing these borders. Also, the “open world” idea is a bit restricted in that not all buildings and areas are actually accessible. There are “hidden” areas which take a bit of work and exploring (or augmented skills) to find, these areas tend to reward you for your perseverance with a bit of extra gear/money/xp.

The map is pretty well done, considering the huge amount of pathing that needs to be covered. What I liked best about the map was the colouring in red of restricted areas, areas that are off limits to you, in which you will be fired upon if discovered.

Quests so far have been interesting enough to keep my attention, and the layering of story has so far been engaging enough to distract attention from the fetch/kill/follow nature of the questing. We will see how long this illusion holds up! As a little disclaimer, I’m only talking about the optional questing, the way I tend to play these games means that I’m chasing many of the optional quests before even considering embarking upon the main story quests (unless there is a doodad from the story quest that might be really really useful!).

XP is rewarded (just like in the last game) for various actions and quest completions. Hacking panels and computers, killing or disabling enemies, reading various story flavour books and finding hidden paths all contribute to your growth. As soon as you hit a certain amount of XP, you gain a Praxis (you can also buy or earn these Praxi) which you then spend upon reactivating your glitched augmentations.

There is a little bit of an unintended side effect in the way that XP is allocated for all these actions. For instance, it is better to hack a panel rather than opening it from the inside, which leads to a bit of careful exploration to try and maximise the XP gain from exploring a particular building.

The little twist in the XP and Augmentation system is the discovery of some powerful hidden augmentations that Jensen was previously unaware of. However, the activation of these newer augmentations currently place a strain on the power systems of Jensen, and so choosing to activate a new augmentation means that you must permanently disable one of your current ones. It’s a tough trade off, and means that really need to focus on how you want to build your character! That said, I’ve currently got a side quest that might have the promise of side-stepping or minimising this power restriction.

I’ve found that the gameplay so far has been good for a stealth/hacker character, the game does reward patience and exploration, and so far I haven’t been forced (other in the tutorial) down an unavoidable violent confrontation. I hope this holds true even for the “boss” enemies, as this was a weakness and a major complaint of the previous game.

The indicators for stealth discovery are quite simple and intuitive, which when combined with mods that give you better situation awareness let you navigate the levels like a super human ninja (sometimes with a bit of save-scumming).

The little bit of combat that I saw in the tutorial and later in a moment of stealth gone bad in a bookstore was tolerable. It is combat that is fast paced and hyper fluid, enemies won’t hesitate to flush you quickly out of cover with grenades and some serious flanking. I really think many of these situations are really built to have you whittle down the numbers and stack the odds in your favour with stealth first, before going loud and breaking out the big guns. Again, that might be my experience as I’m gaming with a stealth/hacker build, which makes my combat skills relatively weak.

Speaking of hacking, the minigame from the previous game makes a re-appearance. I’m mixed about this mini-game. The idea is to capture nodes (with success and speed being affected by your hacker augments) before capturing the last green node for success. The probability for discovery at each node capture/fortify is determined by your skills, but rarely is it non-zero. This means that it can be completely up to chance whether you are dealing with an early discovery from the opposing system or just getting a few undetected captures first. The fact that there is a penalty (no bonus XP or a alarm triggering) to be discovered in the hacking minigame means that this is an area which is really tempting to just restart the minigame with a touch of save-scumming (oh come, we’ve all done it!). This made even worse as there are also some bonus rewards in some of the special nodes, like extra xp or credits, which lead to a further push to try and max out your rewards and minimise your penalties. Luckily the load times are really short!

One of the most critical systems in a RPG is the inventory management and in this aspect, I would say that Mankind Divided is adequate. The restriction on inventory is space based instead of weight based, so different items take up different amounts of slots in your inventory. The amount of space (slots) that you have available to fill can be increased with an arm mod, which oddly enough talks about increasing the amount of weight that you can carry.

Now, for inventory, I understand that there are certain abstractions that are required to make for a good gaming system. I figure that there are two main constraints to inventory, weight and space, and I think that inventory should take both into account rather than abstracting the two factors into a single restriction. The idea of stacking not impacting on your inventory restriction is a bit weird, the idea that there is no difference in carrying one grenade or fifty is one that doesn’t resonate well with me, especially if there is going to be a difference between a smoke grenade and an EMP grenade.

The other thing that I found a little immersion breaking is the concept of hidden weapons. The setting is one where the citizens (the Augmented in particular) of the game universe are constantly under surveillance and continually being checked for credentials. So, the idea that just holstering up to six or eight (some quite large) firearms makes every just behave as you were unarmed is a little odd. I can imagine that anyone carrying six weapons on holsters or straps would attract a little bit of attention in our current society, even more so in a setting where the police and surveillance state is in full force!

However, that said, I do understand that it might have been necessary to abstract these things to make for a gaming experience that appealed to a larger group of gaming consumers, but they were things that bothered me a little bit, but not enough to stop my enjoyment of the game.

There is also a simple crafting mechanic to enhance your weapons. I haven’t played around much with this as I’m not settled yet into what weapons I prefer, so I’ve only made a few modifications to the non-lethal weapons. There are also attachments that you can buy or find for your weapons, so far, I’ve only come across a 4X scope and laser dot. Something that I don’t like about these attachements are that they are permanent additions (I guess adding another destroys the previous attachment). This to me strikes me as unnecessary, after all why would you design irremovable components (like cell phone batteries….)!

I game at 1080p (I haven’t replaced my monitor for a quite some years now, and it is a good size for my Nvidia 1060 to run), and for this game I had the graphical settings set to the preset “high” setting.

Graphics in the cut scenes were pretty nice and a joy to look at. However, I can’t really say the same of the actual game world. Things looked a bit blocky to me and the physics interactions were clunky. However, the saving grace was that performance was top-notch with no noticeable slow down anywhere, and loading times were mercifully short!

Like I said at the beginning of this first impressions review, I’ve been a fan of the Deus Ex series of computer games since the very beginning. I’ve stuck with it through the good times and the bad (ahem, Invisible War), and I was generally impressed with the reboot that began with with Human Revolution.

However, I have mixed feelings about Mankind Divided. In general the quest narrative and the background story universe is engaging and immersive. Somehow, I am not really finding the game world to be of equally high quality. I find the levels a bit restrictive and not really too much fun to play in, and the open world aspect is severely hobbled by artificial no go zones.

I also find the NPCS that (not quest important people) that be just bland and the city feels lifeless.

That said, these minor things are not game breaking problems. The potential in the plot and the interesting side quests are holding my interest admirably, I think it is a likely to be one of the games that I will play to completion.